Table of Contents

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ABC News/Washington Post Monthly Poll #1, January 2006 (ICPSR 4654)

Principal Investigator(s):ABC News; The Washington Post

Summary:

This poll, conducted January 5-8, 2006, is part of a
continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on
the presidency and on a range of other political and social
issues. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President
George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency, ethics in
government, and the United States campaign against terrorism. Views
were sought on whether the war in Iraq was worth fighting, and whether
the federal government was doing enough to protect the rights of
American citizens and people ... (more info)

This poll, conducted January 5-8, 2006, is part of a
continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on
the presidency and on a range of other political and social
issues. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President
George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency, ethics in
government, and the United States campaign against terrorism. Views
were sought on whether the war in Iraq was worth fighting, and whether
the federal government was doing enough to protect the rights of
American citizens and people suspected of involvement in terrorism. A
series of questions addressed the level of honesty of members of the
United States Congress, the level of corruption in federal, state, and
local government, corruption charges against prominent lobbyist Jack
Abrahmoff, and whether it should be legal for registered lobbyists to
make campaign contributions to congressional members or candidates,
give them gifts, or organize fund raisers on their behalf. Additional
questions asked about upcoming Senate confirmation hearings for
federal Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito and whether Alito would
vote to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized
abortion. Demographic variables include sex, age, race, education
level, political party affiliation, political philosophy, religious
preference, and whether respondents considered themselves to be
born-again Christians.

Universe:
Persons aged 18 and over living in households with
telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.

Data Types:
survey data

Data Collection Notes:

(1) The data available for download are not weighted
and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis. (2)
Additional information about sampling, interviewing, and sampling
error may be found in the codebook. (3) Original reports using these
data may be found via the
ABC News Polling Unit
Web site and via the
Washington
Post Opinion Surveys and Polls Web site. (4) System-missing values
were recoded to -1. (5) FIPS and ZIP variables were recoded for
confidentiality. (6) The variables PCTBLACK, PCTASIAN, PCTHISP,
MSAFLAG, CSA, CBSA, METRODIV, ZIP, and NIELSMKT were converted from
character to numeric. (7) According to the data collection instrument,
code 3 in the variable Q909 also included respondents who answered
that they had attended a technical school. (8) Value labels for
unknown codes were added in the CSA, METRODIV, and MSA variables. (9)
Several codes in the variable CBSA contain diacritical marks. (10) The
CASEID variable was created for use with online analysis.

Methodology

Sample:
Households were selected by random-digit dialing. Within
households, the respondent selected was the adult living in the
household who last had a birthday and who was home at the time of
the interview.

Weight:
The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be
used in analyzing the data. The data were weighted using demographic
information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling
deviations from population values. Respondents customarily were
classified into 1 of 48 cells based on age, race, sex, and education.
Weights were assigned so the proportion in each of these 48 cells
matched the actual population proportion according to the Census
Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey.

Mode of Data Collection:
telephone interview

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: